Dennis Barrie, acquitted of obscenity charges for showing photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial works, says the uproar may put his museum out of business. Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center and Barrie, its director, were acquitted this month of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibit of Mapplethorpe's photographs, some of which showed nudity and graphic sexual behavior. Barrie, in New York on Thursday to accept a Hugh M.

A museum curator, testifying at the obscenity trial of the Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Arts and its director, Dennis Barrie, compared Robert Mapplethorpe to Vincent Van Gogh. At issue are five photographs depicting sadomasochistic homosexual acts and two showing children with exposed genitals. Robert Sobieszek, curator of the Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., testifying by videotape, said Mapplethorpe's depiction of homosexual acts was, in effect, an autobiography.

The people, who refuse to believe that the current art/music censorship controversy is racially motivated, need only look to the differences in the outcomes of jury verdicts. The black store manager, who sold 2 Live Crew's album, was found guilty while Dennis Barrie, a white man who is head of an art center in Ohio and whose museum exhibited Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, was found not guilty. I am a criminal defense lawyer, and I see the same iniquities in the criminal justice system daily.

A four-man, four-woman jury was selected to hear a landmark obscenity case involving the sexually explicit photographs of the late Robert Mapplethorpe. Defense attorneys said they hope to show jurors today the art gallery, where "Robert Mapplethorpe: A Perfect Moment" was on exhibit last spring in Cincinnati, drawing record crowds.

Dennis Barrie, the Cincinnati museum director who was indicted then acquitted of violating obscenity laws when he presented a controversial retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, will speak at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art Jan. 21. Barrie, director of the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, will address the issues surrounding his 1990 trial. The 7:30 p.m.